I've signed my paintings in capitals since the mid-80's, Bonnington Square, London, underlined straight. Since the age of 4 always as my first name only... the name my dad Joe gave me... but before it was in small caps, underlined with a curl attached, ended with a flower of 5 rounded petals.

A painter since the age of 4... First successful group art show at Northridge Junior High, San Fernandino Valley, LA, California in 1976 or so... First mural at the age of 17.Obscure writer and illustrator since the age of 7, when the head schoolmaster used to ask to read my tiny orange copybook of the family cats' diaries, every evening, as me, my brother Jeff, and Kirsten and Steff, our american neighbours, used to wait in the courtyard for our bus to arrive and drop us at the bottom of the road to the picturesque hamlet where we all lived.

Since then, a university tutor and a few other people, including members in the american side of the family, throughout the years, and my mother, just recently, have praised my prose. One of her 60's friend from Paris has even framed a letter I wrote and printed on colour paper for him a few weeks ago, saying to her it was like poetry... but that it had two mistakes...

So beware, I might not re-read my text enough sometimes, nor print it out to proof read at least twice as one is supposed to do in proper publishing, nor pull out the dictionary...This is blogg style. Straight out of the bottle.Might be corrected at a later stage, as time goes by.

But going back to my mother. She is also my mentor. So I talk of her time and time again. She had a proper arts education 'per se' at the "Beaux Arts Academy" of Paris for 7 years in the 60's, fine art, painting. She has been a very talented painter in her time but she doesn't seem to want to produce any more artwork at the moment. I try hardto tempt her, making the journey to bring her a cloth bag of big oil paint tubes and a ten meter roll of primed quality canvas, as I did when I split the proceeds of the sale of one of my paintings to a parisian family in half... She now may only want to saw a fabric bag for my "MiniDV" camera, in the fashion of the yellow ochre one she made for my dad's "6 X6 stills" camera 4 decades ago.

I didn't do the "Beaux Arts Academy". Instead I went to the least arty college of the "University of the Arts London", the "London College of Communication", to do the least arty courses they had on offer there. Late life study. I studied "Digital Media Production" (BA(Hons) and "Enterprise and Management for the Creative Arts" (Master's) than quit academia to go back to number one... painting, which I had never ever given up anyway... and probably never will.

Thought you might like to read an artist's view of the world and of herself within it.

I live and come across some interesting stories sometimes, pledge to use this little website as a sort of blogg, and keep you posted, if you are interested. A certain Caroline who exhibits in the gallery of this beautiful building where my studio is situated passed on the weebly address to me today, while I had a chat with her as she sat on the invigilation chair. I had been looking for the first opportunity to do a blogg, so here I am tonight, typing away with two fingers, while the wind blows and breathes on the autumnal trees outside behind the window ajar and the long egg yolk yellow cotton curtains.These curtains where bought as a 'Made in India' bedspread more than ten years ago and my flat has resonated with expenses of yellow all along. Film-maker friend Vivienne's Swiss Cottage mustard yellow floor paint onto my kitchen floor... Kitchen and bathroom South of France Mum's yellow on kitchen walls and ceiling as well on one rectangle cutout of the living room / office / storage space / digital studio / dining room / gym / yoga space / let's see, what else?... Yellow carpets upstairs in the mezzanine bedroom when there is a spare clean one and they are not put away for a while until I walk them to the ghetto laundry at the end of the park and middle-class road. Yellow sheets and some of the pillows yellow with some large flowers on the bed at the moment.Perhaps I need to go to bed.It is now 23.32 and I still want to visit my other website, though.

The contact link I have on my other website www.joycesart.co.uk .

Cars where the focus of my painting's concern from 2000 to 2007. "The Cars Series", of which you can only see the top middle part above. "Good Bad Dream", 6m X 1.5m, Wimbledon Spectrum mural acrylics on Fabriano paper, yet to be exhibited beyond the short animation I filmed of it and included in my first CD-Rom catalogue, 2005, sold @ my open studios ever since and part of my thesis for the BA(hons) 2.1 in Digital Media Production before then.

Yes, I am not always modest and I can boast about this or that. That makes up for other times when I am very low key, quiet, introverted, absorbing knowledge or a situation, an experience.One of my greatest qualities is not to be perfect but excellent, at least at times. As many times as I can. Not too many. Just enough to carry on, good, sometimes very good, always persevering, in lesser or greater happiness, but always passionate. Art is my life... the "Creative Arts", as I also involve myself in publishing, design and even music... but the main thing for me in particular, is painting. I wish I could find an extra layer a life to develop some animation and filmaking...

As I paint and draw horses at the moment I continue this page with a horse. Half-trakhener filly, found in a equestrian magazine on a past midnight shopping for food, and, if I made myself lucky that night, flowers, at Sainsbury's Gloucester road, London GB. It was a thumbnail colour photograph of her, for sale... hooves missing. My mother's family used to breed trakhener horses and live on the sale of one per year. This little drawn 'painting' now resides above my sienna marble effect filling cabinet, above there to my right.Looking that way, I see the red dot shining light on my dish washer. Up. This needs to be switched off.By the way I have a black and white photocopied photograph of the french architectural styled 'small castle', 'large house' where my mother, when she wasn't away at boarding school in Bergen which was most of the time, and her uncle and aunt used to live in Norway, surrounded by gorgeous huge nordic trees... It's hanging from one of the doors of my recycled wardrobe in the mezzanine bedroom upstairs. Will scan it and upload it ASAP.

It is actually now half past midnight. There is a helicopter's hovering above the roof windows. The wind is rising again.I've almost finished this bag of prewashed spinach baby leaves and feel thirsty now.My other website is on page 7 in a google search for Joyce as I hadn't updated it since the 6th of October.The 24th of October 2008 has just begun.There is probably a murderer or 2 with guns on the run in the night outside, not far at all.The stone arch which holds my space in it's arms reassures me that I am safe inside.Silence again. Just the restart of the fridge cooler...

Mum's house #1

Near Bergen, in Norway. I promessed to upload an image of it some time ago last year so here it is, on the 6 January 2009.Magnificent place really. She was very fortunate... Of course it was her parents' house (small castle I like to think), Uncle and aunt, living all their life together as a partnership, breeding these trackhener race or show jumping horses in the harch climes of Norway before emigrating again to retire in Miami, Florida, from where my mother heard of them again once or twice for all I know. They had another large summer house by the sea in Norway. Here, let me try and upload some text for you if you are at all interested, which I typed on my precious little silver Mac on my last trip to the South of France, after a conversation with my Mum. There might be some french language in the text, so sharpen your wits:September 2008. 1 km from Limoux, South of France."Mum has been asleep for about an hour. I have completed the second application in oil onto the four doors of her living room studio cupboard. Today was the figurative layer, started with a partial glaze of warm yellow onto the rather childish, crudish acrylic colors which I applied yesterday.We started the morning with a long talk in the kitchen, her with eggs and potatoes from the frying pan, as she hadn't eaten last night, and a light coffee, me with numerous cups of green tea given that I was planning to do my yoga session before breakfast. We talked in length mostly about mum's past, in Norway, as I had the chance to question her and learn more about her and our roots.How she spent most of her life at the boarding school in Bergen below the town by the harbour. Bergen built on a steep slope with multicoloured houses which fend off the darkness and dull light of the long winters... The scandinavian traditional thick felt embroided clothes of bright colours which her generation was the last to were during celebrations. Those are only worn now for tourism attractions. The mid calf woolen socks, blues, worn under shoes with skirts and white shirts. Little white socks in the summer. Seal boots to walk out in the snow in winter. The stunts one in which she broke both arms and a foot for having swang holding pipes in the basement of the school, rather than in the gym, and fallen down the stairs bellow, from which her favourite male friend, bright redhaired, of the time, ran to get rescue. She stayed in hospital for a year after that and came out to give up snow jumping, which she previously dared at 7 meters height, and only cross country ski instead. Once a year, her uncle and aunt would send for her with a taxi which would drive her back to their estate 250 km inland from Bergen. There the building, which they had built of stone in the french style, had paths of fine gravel circling around the front facade amongst the large trees which I see on photocopied Black and White photograph on my wardrobe in London. 200 hectares of land surrounded what looks to me like a small castle, the ground level of which comprised a large reception room, a kitchen, and a hall. Also a television room. Two life size porcelaine tigers sat there onto which my mother, as a child, liked to slide. There were no plants that my mother can recall, nor paintings. Upstairs was her uncle's appartement, up a large curled staircaise, where he mostly sat at his desk doing the financials, and a few rooms away her aunt's, his sister, who also had a strong business input in their Trackener horse entreprise. There were telephones all around the house. Mum's quarters was closer to her aunt's but a few rooms apart. The female servant was in a room below the roof and the cook was in the house thereby attached. A gardener would come from without the property.

Mum had a big set of zoo animals made of articulated painted wood with which she would play for hours often on the veranda. She had to make more than one trip to take them there were it must have felt warm and sunny as she only came home for the summer holidays. One day she was offered a red 'trottinette' with large wheels with was propelled by a foot pedale onto which she would push down and which would move quite well on the fine gravel.Later she was offered a beautifull luxury blue bicycle -there were no gears in these days - that she would ride away in the forest with when her uncle and aunt, who forbed such adventures, were away. The servants were not to tell and they wouldn't. It seems to me she knew how to intimidate them...In the forest she would see bears, sometimes as close as 20 m, but said they were black bears and would run away at her sight. Sometimes there was a mother and her cubs. She would see deers, their presence explaining how the forests were rather free of undergrowth shrubs. She would go as far as a big huge 'chene' and their stop before going back having gone for most of the day, without food and drink.

Her aunt is the source of numerous painfull memories. She would place nicely wrapped fine chocolates onto the furniture here and there, and once, when mum took a bite, later another bite, later vanquished devored the whole piece, put her bags by the front door to tell her that the taxi was coming and that she was due to return to the boarding school. Sometimes she would even threaten of giving her away to another family. Her uncle disapprouved of her harsh educational methods but she seems to have had the upper hand. One day mum came home in the white volkswagen of their neighbour's son, who lived almost 100km away, and he kissed her on the cheeks, that being seen by the aunt. In Norway, people barely shake hands, or tap each other on the shoulder. Mum came indoors to receive a 'thundering' slap on the face.

There were thirty trakehner mares and a few trotters. Mum was only allowed to ride the trotters when somebody was available to accompany her. They were left in separate pastures from the Trakehners, and all the horses were in paddock for most of the year, given the harsh climate.I will hopefully interview mum about the horses before I return this time.Night night..."